What we do

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Bees for Development assists beekeepers living in poor and remote areas of the world, and raises awareness about the value of beekeeping for poverty alleviation.  We work with beekeepers, charities, and government institutions, raising the profile of beekeeping in developing countries to ensure a sustainable future for bees, people and the environment.  

We achieve this by:

• Encouraging the use of indigenous, local bees, local skills and local resources which are sustainable, feasible, cost-beneficial, and good for bees and beekeepers.
• Providing skills and information - more sustainable than providing donations of equipment or money.
• Advocating for policy change, on behalf of beekeepers, to ensure that developing country honey producers can access worthwhile markets to sell their honey and beeswax.
• Providing appropriate training and resources for community beekeeping activities, to improve knowledge of marketing and business, and to support a wider, sustainable economy.
• Publishing a quarterly journal to beekeepers in over 130 developing countries, provided free of charge, to keep people up-to-date with knowledge of the latest research, events, different marketing techniques and honey bee disease control.
• Undertaking development projects to improve earnings and build capacity in poor, rural communities.
• Maintaining a global beekeeping network and an extensive information library that people from all over the world can access free of charge. Beekeepers use our network to get in touch with each other and to share information.
• Answering dozens of enquiries each week, from beekeepers, projects, honey traders, schools, government institutions, NGOs and organisations worldwide.
• Offering a service to donors who need expertise on beekeeping for development projects.

Through our free training programmes we are able to foster local beekeeping skills and develop beekeepers’ knowledge of marketing and business to improve their access to markets and ensure a better price for their honey and beeswax.

We offer training and support in

• making hives and protective clothing from local materials
• managing bees, collecting honey safely, handling and storing it hygienically
• developing other saleable, value added goods from the products of beekeeping: beeswax, propolis and honey
• marketing and business skills to ensure the sustainable generation of new income by poor, rural communities in developing countries.